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Election to be held at state meeting in Burlington this Saturday
By Guy Page
Yesterday VDC featured audio clips of Russ Ingalls and Paul Dame, the two candidates for state chair of the Vermont Republican Party from their speaking at a GOP breakfast in Barre Saturday, November 8.
Like Dame and Ingalls, three candidates for the vice-chair position will face the judgement of voters at the annual party meeting Saturday at a Burlington hotel. Today, we offer their quotes and clips, recorded at the same breakfast.
William Kolb, Norwich University Class of 2025 and Valedictorian for the 2023 Northfield High School graduating class, is now a Master of Public Administration student at Norwich. An intern in the 2025 session for Lt. Gov. John Rodgers, he served as the chair of the Northfield Town Republican Party after it restarted in January of 2024, and has been involved with “various conservative and Republican causes since I moved to the state of Vermont in the summer of 2020,” he said in his bio on a page listing the candidates for the November 8 election by delegates to the annual meeting. At the Barre breakfast he said engages young people having a hard time getting established in Vermont, putting himself in their shoes:
“Why do I have to pay so much in taxes? Why can I not find a job? Here’s why. Those small, specific things make it personal for people. They will feel that call. We don’t have to have this grand 1000 page plan. It can be as simple as, Hey, you want to have a house, you want to have money in your bank account, you want to have a family, here’s what you have to do.” William Kolb in his own words:
Greg Thayer of Rutland has an MBA in accounting and works as a Financial Audit Reviewer and has a small Tax practice. He and his partner Tammy live in Rutland. Thayer has run for lieutenant governor and has founded several grassroots organizations promoting citizen advocacy and constitutional government.
Following a question by Paul Malone asking why he wants to be vice-chair, Thayer told the Barre breakfast crowd:
“This isn’t about Gregory Thayer or Paul Dame or [other candidates]. It’s about we, the people, all of us, working together. So I want to address Mr. Malone’s question. First, I think it’s really about engaging the younger generation. And I was engaged by the late, great senator John H Bloomer senior, back when I was like 22 years old, working at my parents market in Rutland, going to Castleton State College at the time. And he invited me to a meeting, and I went and the people you see in the paper and on TV… people from Rutland that I knew, you’re in the same room with them, and you’re talking to them about policy. And I think that’s really powerful.” Here’s the audio:
According to his bio on the list of candidates for the November 8 election, Rep. Zachary Harvey of Castleton is a 7th generation Vermonter and member of House Judiciary Committee. Before entering public service, He spent a decade in financial services, holding various roles at the New York Stock Exchange and its parent company, Intercontinental Exchange, a Fortune 500 technology and data services firm valued at $90 billion. He led strategic and operational initiatives of a global team with 2,000 colleagues across 14 countries and $2 billion in annual revenue. A graduate of Providence College, Harvey holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with a minor in Economics and studied International Relations at University College London.
During the Q & A, Brooke Paige of the town of Washington asked Harvey, “How do you differentiate your job as vice chair from the chairman of the party?” Harvey answered:
“You really have to have two people working in lockstep as a team. And I think that is one area for improvement in whatever organization that you have is that you want to make sure that people are singing from the same sheet of music, and that they are working together alongside each other.
“I view the role of the chairman is to be the strategic Strategy Officer for the Vermont Republican Party. This person is the one who’s going out building those relationships with donors, working on it, really being an ambassador for our brand across the state.
The role of Vice Chair I view as someone who’s going to be supporting all those initiatives and helping with the day to day operations of the party, obviously in an unpaid capacity. So I do think that there is this tandem.” Here’s the clip from Saturday, November 1:
This week, VDC will provide information about other Republican posts up for election at the November 8 meeting.
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Categories: politics
Why is that politicians are so long-winded on rhetorical talking points and super short on specific details of their policies? Anyone?
Case in point: The amount of times references to team building, improving organization, and this gem “you want to make sure that people are singing from the same sheet of music, and that they are working together…” You mean reciting the script like a well-trained thespian? Both sides are signing the same song and doing the same dance – ad nauseam. They all sound like Human Resource Department manuals. Energizing the base or performing hypnosis? Appears to be the latter as the State and the country circle the bowl.
Perhaps more debt bundling to bonds is the only answer they have – you know renting millions of dollars into the future to cover expenses and finance pet projects at a nominal rate? Is that why Japan bonds stretch 40 years now? Japan, the largest US debt holder at $1.1 trillion. The other $37 Trillion divided up among foreigners and banks. Credit default swaps, currency drops, roll it all over and start over Rover… madness, absolute madness.
That “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money”, is a paraphrase of a statement by Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 work, Democracy in America (Volume 1, Chapter 8, Part 2). However, while Tocqueville’s actual wording is more nuanced, it warns that our Republic risks collapse when legislators use public funds to buy voter support, creating a cycle of dependency.
Benjamin Franklin warned us, in his speech on September 17, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention: “In these Sentiments, Sir, ….. this Constitution … can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other…. For when you assemble a Number of Men to have the Advantage of their joint Wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those Men all their Prejudices, their Passions, their Errors of Opinion, their local Interests, and their selfish Views.”
Sixty-two years later, in his essay on ‘Civil Disobedience’, H.D. Thoreau wrote;
“I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe- “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.”
What our politicians, elected and aspiring to be elected, never seem to fully grasp is ‘context’ – historic, cultural, social and personal. They inevitably, and always temporarily, become yet another, ‘Lord of The Flies’.